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Rothadam
Rebel / Contention - 7"
LMP - 1975
Michael Panontin
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Errol Gayle was one of the many Jamaicans who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. That unlikely wave of islanders brought with them some damn fine cooking skills, a near-obsessive love of music and, in Toronto's case in particular, at least two bona fide reggae superstars in Leroy Sibbles and Jackie Mittoo.
Gayle cut his musical teeth in the hardscrabble Trenchtown area of Kingston, appearing in talent shows at the Majestic Theatre and singing for his uncle, probably the first person to recognize his talents. "I used to sing for my uncle to get my show fare, to go and see the movies," he told cratedigger Chris Flanagan, "so he saw something, you know, young little guy, don't really know anything yet, but he said, 'Come back, come back next week and sing for me again' and so I keep doing it."
Gayle managed to land some recording time with the great producer Bunny Lee, but nothing seems to have become of it. And so, with family already up in Canada, he decided to make the move northwards, leaving behind the poverty and violence of his hometown for the frigid, wind-swept streets of Toronto.
As the curiously named Rothadam, he appeared locally in the many ex-pat bars and clubs that dotted Toronto in the mid-seventies. Though Rothadam never achieved even a modicum of fame, he was always a consummate performer. "If I'm gonna do a show, I rehearse for two weeks," he said. "When it comes to the show business, I don't play." At some point, he crossed paths with Sid Lovejoy, a welder and part-time musician, whose house at 917 Bathurst Street doubled up as a record shop and a recording studio.
It was there, surrounded by restaurants, barber shops and beauty supply stores in what was a thriving Jamaican community, that Rothadam cut perhaps the finest roots reggae side in this country's history. 'Rebel''s thunderous rhythm - with a rock-solid Sibbles anchoring it on bass - those searing horns and Rothadam's silky smooth vocal, which clearly nods in the direction of Horace Andy, is a revelation when you first hear it, and must have been even more so to an Australian ex-pat rummaging through boxes of dusty forty-fives some thirty years later.
"I found Rothadam's 'Rebel' 45 in a shipping barrel in the basement of fabled Eglinton West mainstay Monica's on my first trip to Canada more than a decade ago," Flanagan told CM. "I loved the song immediately but at the time there was zero information on the song or Rothadam online. It was the strangest reggae name I'd ever heard but it seemed like no one knew what happened to him."
With some sleuth-like effort, he managed to track down the singer, alive and well and living out his life in a north Toronto apartment. Though Rothadam no longer makes music, it is still very much with him, and he was more than happy to chat about 'Rebel' and the neighbourhood that inspired it. "[Trenchtown], that's a bad area man. Some guy, they just want to shoot people, some guy they want to sing you know. I leave from there and I come here," he explains. Which is to say that Rothadam the rebel was the one who chose peace and unity over crime and violence. "Because where I was living, it's hard to don't get involved. It wasn't an easy thing to just live and just be happy. Hard life man, hard life. Most of my friends when they were doing things that aren't right, not me. So in other words, I was born to be a strong man."
(Scratchy copies of 'Rebel' have fetched upwards of 500 bucks a pop these days. But for those of us mere mortals who still prefer their reggae with a side of seven-inch wax, Flanagan and his Shella Records have thankfully pressed up a strictly limited edition of 'Rebel' along with the equally excellent Half Moon Studio version over on the backside.)
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